by Harihar Swarup
A do-or-die fighter for a cause
A visitor is received with courtesy at Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s office. The lift man says ‘‘namaste Sahib’’, the peon in front of the minister’s office greets the caller with another ‘‘namaste’’ and ushers him into a packed waiting room.

Why Sheila called off Moscow Yatra?
Last weekend the Delhi Government announced that the Chief Minister, Mrs Sheila Dikshit, had cancelled her official trip to Moscow in order to deal with the situation arising out of the truckers’ strike. Adding to it was the rising tempers over cent per cent increase in the fares of Delhi’s woeful city transport service — DTC.

75 Years Ago

Repression in Bengal
THE expected has happened. Repression in Bengal has commenced with the issue by the Governor-General of an exceptionally drastic Ordinance and the arrest of several prominent Congressmen and Swarajists in Bengal headed by Mr Bose, Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation.

Who is afraid of the Pope?
by Abu Abraham

ONE thing that is not going to change in the next millennium (so I feel) is the Great Indian Caste System. There are already signs that it is strengthening itself all over the country, even in Communist-led Kerala.

There is a spurious revival of religious orthodoxy, particularly of Hinduism. And now that we have a government dominated by a resurgent BJP, every backward-looking communalist organisation feels that its day has come. So we are going to see more of the Sangh Parivar’s never-so-hidden agenda in the coming months.

The philosophy of Hindutva might have attained more respectability in my eyes or in the eyes of Hindu liberals had it not been propagated by so many uncultured and uncouth protagonists of the cult, more known for their mission of hate against the minorities than for any true understanding of Hindu culture or philosophy. To find a person who had a deep understand-ing of the history and culture of India, you only have to read The Discovery of India, written by a well-known ‘Son of Macaulay’, Jawaharlal Nehru. He traces the history and culture of India from the time of the Mauryas with extraordinary perception and objectivity. He attributes the steady decline of the culture and way of life of our country of the rigidity of Hindu society and, in particular, to the caste system which has over a long period made us all slaves and bigots of one kind or another.

He writes: ‘India was not lacking in mental alertness and technical skill in earlier times. One senses a progressive deterioration during centuries. The urge to life and endeavour becomes less, the creative spirit fades away and gives place to the imitative. Where triumphant and rebellious thought had tried to pierce the mysteries of nature and the universe, the wordy commentator comes with his glosses and long explanations. Magnificent art and sculpture give way to a meticulous carving of intricate detail without nobility of conception or design. The vigour and richness of language, powerful yet simple, are followed by highly ornate and complex literary forms. The urge to adventure and the overflowing life which led to vast schemes of distant colonisation and the transplantation of Indian culture in far lands, all these fade away and a narrow orthodoxy taboos even the crossing of the high seas. A rational spirit of enquiry, so evident in earlier times, which might well have led to the further growth of science, is replaced by irrationalism and a blind idolatry of the past. Indian life becomes a sluggish stream, living in the past, moving slowly through the accumulations of dead centuries. The heavy burden of the past crushes it and a kind of coma seizes it. It is not surprising that in this condition of mental stupor and physical weariness India should have deteriorated and remained rigid and immobile while other parts of the world march ahead’.

It is to this stagnant world that our votaries of Hindutva want to lead us — not to the next millennium. A society confident of itself and knowing where it wanted to go wouldn’t have gone into a panic over the Pope’s visit. They find in the Pope (and in Christian missions) a destabilising agency generally threath-ening Hindu society and the caste system on which it is structured. Remove caste and Hinduism will collapse — or this is what they seem to believe.

Buddhism with its rejection of the Vedas and stress on social equality was such a threat earlier and orthodox Hinduism saw to it that it was virtually destroyed in India while it flourished in the rest of Asia.

Apart from the threat of conversion and liberation from the chains of caste (though some Christian converts continue to retain some sort of caste acceptance), there is also the threat arising from the lower orders being educated. The Hindu tradition has never been strong on popular education. On the contrary, from ancient times the attempt of the upper caste has been to deny learning to the lower caste. It’s no use blaming the Moghuls or the British for our backwardness. It is time Hindu society accepted the major share of the blame for creating a nation in which three-quarters of its citizens are illiterate.

But is any Hindu leader going to apologise for the violence and humiliation that has been heaped on the Dalits and the tribals for as long as one can remember?

by Harihar Swarup
A do-or-die fighter for a cause

A visitor is received with courtesy at Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s office. The lift man says ‘‘namaste Sahib’’, the peon in front of the minister’s office greets the caller with another ‘‘namaste’’ and ushers him into a packed waiting room.

The minister’s personal staff is polite and the waiting time is not long. One can feel the Mamata-style of functioning at the sprawling Rail Bhavan.

‘‘I am a commoner first and a minister last’’, she asserts. Mamata wants to maintain her image of a street fighter in a crumpled sari even as she presides over the biggest ministry, having a separate Budget presented to Parliament every year.

She was completely fagged out when this correspondent met her late in the evening. ‘‘I am working since morning, feeling tired and not in right frame of mind to reply to all your questions’’, she said. I did not feel like engaging her in a long conversation. ‘‘Only a few questions will do, Mamataji’’, I told her and the replies indicated that her priority is to ensure foolproof safety in the Railways.

The new safety system means a colossal amount of money and the Railway Ministry does not have enough financial resources. Does that mean a hike in the rail fare? ‘‘No, no’’, Mamata asserts, ‘‘I won’t raise the fare. On the contrary, the passengers should be given more relief. We have to generate revenue from within (the ministry)... generate revenue from alternate sources’’.

How does she feels in the Railway Ministry, the portfolio she long coveted?

‘‘It is a rough, tough and hard job. So much work has to be done’’. Mamata says West Bengal has been neglected for long. Though she is committed to the much-talked-about package about her state, she says the Railway Ministry is for the entire nation and not a particular region.

Though Mamata has been at the helm of the Railway Ministry for over two weeks, she does not propose to change her style of living. She wears rubber slippers and a simple cotton sari (when in Calcutta lives in a one-room tenement.) In Delhi she does not propose to move to the ministerial bungalow but continue in the modest MP’s flat in the multistorey building on Baba Kharag Singh Marg. She normally does not use the ministerial car for going to office, which is less than a kilometre away from her flat and has refused security paraphernalia.

The profile of no leader has changed so rapidly as that of Mamata. She has now become a force to reckon with in West Bengal, second only to the Marxists with the Congress lagging far behind. The CPM is scared of her. She says her party — the Trinamool Congress — will ultimately replace Marxists in West Bengal and that the Congress is bound to go into oblivion.

Now in the mid-forties, Mamata is known to be a daredevil. Once she takes up a cause, she would never give it up whatever the consequences may be. Even when she was a minister in the P.V. Narasimha Rao Government she staged a dharna in front of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s chamber at Writers Building in Calcutta. She was demanding justice for a poor deaf and dumb girl allegedly raped by certain persons owing allegiance to CPM. Ministerial office did not suit Mamata’s style of functioning and she quit the Rao Ministry within a few months.

Like the late socialist leader, Raj Narain, Mamata also clashed with the police if it came in her way. No leader has been assaulted by the police and Marxist cadres so many times as she. She was seen on the small screen groaning with pain on the hospital bed and raising her plastered hand in the Lok Sabha. A slogan coined by her supporters those days said: ‘‘Mamata, thy name is struggle’’.

In 1997 when the plenary session of the Congress under the presidentship of Sita Ram Kesri was held in Calcutta, Mamata raised the banner of revolt against his leadership. She organised a parallel rally near Netaji Indoor Stadium, where the plenum was being held. Her rally turned out to be a roaring success while that of the Congress proved a flop.

Sarcastically, she described the Kesri Congress as the ‘‘indoor Congress’’ and her rally as the ‘‘outdoor Congress’’.

In a bid to placate her, Kesri described Mamata as ‘‘my daughter’’ but she retorted: ‘‘I don’t need a father like this old bandicoot’’.

Mamata burst into the limelight and made headlines when she defeated the Marxist stalwart, Somnath Chatterjee, in the December 1984 elections. Rajiv Gandhi had personally picked her to face the front-ranking Marxist leader despite strong opposition from the party’s West Bengal unit.

Mamata emerged on the West Bengal political scene in the late seventies when an anti-Indira Gandhi wave was gaining strength. She stood by her and Mrs Gandhi recognised the fighting acumen in the young girl from Calcutta. Mamata now embarks on a new phase in her political career full of struggle.

Why Sheila called off Moscow Yatra?

Last weekend the Delhi Government announced that the Chief Minister, Mrs Sheila Dikshit, had cancelled her official trip to Moscow in order to deal with the situation arising out of the truckers’ strike. Adding to it was the rising tempers over cent per cent increase in the fares of Delhi’s woeful city transport service — DTC.

So instead of a walk across the Volga in Moscow, the Chief Minister had to tiptoe her way through the wholesale vegetable market in Northwest Azadpur to take first hand account of the supply situation in the Capital.

Well for a government that reaped electoral harvest thanks to the onion crisis last November, it certainly could not afford to give the Opposition a handle in the wake of the clean sweep by the BJP in the recent Lok Sabha elections, least of all on vegetables.

Political circles had another interesting observation to make. In fact knives were out in the city unit of the Congress party soon after the electoral whitewash what with an influential section demanding her replacement.

A couple of nights before her scheduled departure to the Russian Capital, several senior Congress leaders of the city including a Minister in her Cabinet, Mr Mohinder Singh Sathi, reportedly attending a conclave to formulate strategy for her ouster. It is another matter that the hush-hush meeting found its way to the front page of a leading daily. The cat was out of the bag.

Mrs Dikshit preferred to stay put lest she be ousted in a coup. The damage control exercise began with her loyalists holding a dinner meeting the next evening and in the grand tradition of the party the assembled expressed full faith in the leadership of the Chief Minister. The final whistle to the game the Delhi Pradesh Congress leaders were playing was blown by the Congress President, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, herself.

Punjabi angle in Washington

The US Energy Secretary, Mr Bill Richardson, a Cabinet member of the Clinton Administration, nursed his constituency while on his visit to India. Mr Richardson is a Senator from New Mexico, where Yogi Harbhajan, an NRI religious leader, wields considerable influence. At the suggestion of Yogi Harbhajan, Mr Richardson advised the US Embassy in New Delhi to include in the Ambassador’s dinner guest list Mr Tarlochan Singh, former Press Secretary to the President of India, who is also a known official adviser on Public Affairs to the present ruling elite of Delhi.

Mr Tarlochan Singh’s inclusion in the list of invitees which otherwise included top officials and captains of industry perhaps went unnoticed by the mandarins of our Foreign Office. The fact is that of the hundred Senators on Washington’s Capitol Hill, at least 10, like Mr Richardson, can be influenced through NRI pressure groups. While Mr Richardson consulted Yogi Harbhajan before embarking on his trip to New Delhi, do our foreign policy makers likewise involve influential NRIs to win friends on Capitol Hill?

Royalty counts

The scions of the former ruling families of India may have per force given up their titles, privileges and privy purses, thanks to the stand of Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1969, but their ancestors’ ways is said to still dominate their lifestyles. Even today they find their way to Europe during the hunting/shooting season. The recent disappearance of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President, Captain Amarinder Singh of Patiala, from the country is attributed to this trait. The Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in Parliament, Mr Madhavrao Scindia, too may be Europe bound soon.

It is, therefore, not surprising that despite depriving the Akali Dal success in nine out of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, the party has not been able to claim political mileage commensurate to its success. And this lethargy was also perhaps reflected when the Congress effort to raise the Bofors issue was shattered to smithereens by the powerful blast of Lawyer-Minister Arun Jaitley. The common talk in the party now is: it is Royalty which counts, Loyalty comes thereafter.

‘‘Departed’’ not ‘‘martyred’’

The choice of language by the Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in Parliament, Mr Madhavrao Scindia, during his intervention on Bofors last Monday suggested that in the eyes of the official establishment of the Congress, Rajiv Gandhi was ‘‘dead’’. Instead of the politically appropriate terminology like ‘‘Beloved leader’’ or ‘‘Reverend leader’’, the former Prince of Gwalior chose to refer to Rajiv Gandhi as ‘‘Dear departed leader’’ who had ‘‘passed away’’.

Seasoned MPs sitting in the House felt that even a political novice would use ‘‘martyred’’ or ‘‘brutally assassinated’’ for referring to Rajiv Gandhi’s demise. This apart, the murmur in the party is why its Floor Leader in the Lok Sabha, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, chose to be in faraway Orissa and not in the House when the matter was taken up.

An old-timer recalled a Latin proverb: ‘‘Suppressio veri suggestio falsi’’ (suppression of facts suggests falsehood). Was someone trying to suppress something last Monday?

Surveillance in Parliament

Political fame runs in certain families and that is enough to put one on guard. Sangita Singh Deo, the BJP MP from Bolangir in Western Orissa, feels she has enough surveillance in Parliament. Enumerating names of her family members, Ms Deo said her aunt-in-law happens to be Maharani Parneet Kaur of Patiala, her uncle-in-law is the former Union Minister for External Affairs, Kunwar Natwar Singh, another uncle-in-law, Dileep Singh Judeo, is a Rajya Sabha MP, yet another uncle-in-law happens to be K P Singh Deo. Not only this, the MP from Kalahandi, Vikram Kesri Deo, is her uncle-in-law. Fame surely runs in the family as her grandfather-in-law and former Maharaja, R.N. Singh Deo, was the Chief Minister of Orissa. Her husband, Yuvraj K.V. Singh Deo, is an MLA from Patanagarh in Orissa.

Priyaranjan’s double role

Now that former Youth Congress leader, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, ‘Priyo’ or ‘Priyoda’ to his friends, has been formally named the Chief Whip of the Congress Party in the Lok Sabha, he has a double role to play.

Mr Dasmunshi, is also the President of the All India Football Federation and with the sports season having kicked off he has plenty to do, at least that is how some people experienced.

Recently when some people connected with football called up Mr Dasmunshi, someone at his residence replied that he was busy in Parliament. Later when another person, this time from the political spectrum called up in connection with Parliamentary work, the reply was that Mr Dasmunshi was busy attending to chores as the head of the AIFF.

While one cannot deny that within the midst of sports season and Parliament session going on simultaneously the work schedule is heavy. But it seems the dichotomy of work has started showing on ‘Priyoda’.

And now health tambola

The Heart Care Foundation of India which is organising the Health Mela plans to demonstrate an innovative way of playing Tambola during the fair. All the numbers from one to 90 convey a meaningful health message. The organisers say unlike the conventional Tambola game where 88 is introduced as ‘‘two fat ladies’’, 22 as ‘‘two little ducks’’ and likewise, the health tambola offers useful information. The tambola enlists one-line messages. For instance, number 6 stands for the population of the world in billions, 42 indicates the percentage of alcohol in wine, number 74 as the percentage of rural population and number 84 as the year of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Lakshman ahead of Ram

This time around there was practically no invocation of Lord Ram’s name in the new Lok Sabha. ‘Jai Shriram’ slogan that rent the House on earlier occasions were far and few and the only mention of the Lord’s name came during a serious debate which was more in humour.

Just as the Union Law Minister, Mr Ram Jethmalani, was about to wind up the debate on the Constitutional Amendment Bill extending reservation for Scheduled Caste/Schedule Tribe and for Anglo-Indians in Parliament for another 10 years, Congress MP Laxman Singh got up seeking permission to speak. Even before the Chair could react, some MPs raised their voice urging that Laxman had the right to speak before Ram. Thereafter no one argued, the point was made and Mr Jethmalani yielded to have the Congress MP, express himself on the Bill.

(Contributed by SB, T.V. Lakshminarayan, K.V. Prasad, Tripti Nath and P.N. Andley)

75 YEARS AGO
October 31, 1924
Repression in Bengal

THE expected has happened. Repression in Bengal has commenced with the issue by the Governor-General of an exceptionally drastic Ordinance and the arrest of several prominent Congressmen and Swarajists in Bengal headed by Mr Bose, Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation.

While reserving detailed comment on the Ordinance and the policy of which it is the outcome, for the next issue, we will say at once that the Government of the State has in this matter perpetrated a blunder which far surpasses all its previous blunders and the consequences of which no man can foretell.